An emerging trend in the increasingly electronic business world is using the World Wide Web and email to provide up-to-the-minute business documents to customers and other end users. Automated document generation and electronic distribution, such as using email or web services has many advantages. It significantly reduces costs associated with preprinting forms, document archiving, mailing, handling etc. It gives line-of-business users access to important data instantly and makes documents available to the customers at all times, around-the-clock. However, certain drawbacks are present with electronic documents, including the potential for tampering or creation of fraudulent documents that in most or all aspects resemble the original.
Many software tools have been suggested to protect the integrity and confidentiality of electronic documents. These tools, such as plug-ins, may give broad control to adding or changing notes and form fields in the electronic document, document encryption, as well as adding digital signatures to the documents.
A significant drawback in the protective measures typically used to protect documents provided in electronic format is that these measures are often useless once the document is transferred to a printed media. Further, typical hard copy protective measures may not be available to the recipient of the electronic document. For example, security ink or secure paper may be available to the document creator but not to the recipient of an electronically transmitted document. Clearly, maintaining the security of hard copies of electronically transmitted copies is problematic when the document creator has no control over the printing process. Furthermore, many desktop image-editing software tools can be used to create counterfeit printouts of even complex electronic documents. Printed documents are still widely used in many aspects of daily life, including business and government settings.
Widely used protection methods for deterring digital counterfeiting and identifying data alterations include bar codes and digital watermarking. These are usually added as an image file into a document by the originating party. However, bar-code generation software is widely available and can be used by a counterfeiter to create fraudulent documents.
Digital watermarking has also been proposed as a solution, but tests have shown that it may lack the reliability necessary for consistent and widespread use. Further, implementing such technology is often expensive, with equipment costs for the necessary hardware and software sometimes canceling the cost savings achieved through electronic document distribution. The amount of information that can be protected may often be limited to just several digits or letters. These problems put a severe constraint on reliability and usage of electronic documents in commerce and services.
Counterfeiting and alteration of printed documents and black market sales of counterfeit goods are significant problems faced with increasing regularity in today's world. Each year many millions of dollars are lost through the fraudulent use of non-authentic documents and branded goods. The increasing sophistication of optical scanners, copy machines and other devices used for replicating items continues to enhance the counterfeiter's ability to produce fraudulent documents and other imitations which are of sufficient quality to often go undetected.
Protection of documents has been accomplished through the application of encoded images. Such images typically cannot be discerned or interpreted without a specially tailored optical decoder. They may be used on virtually any form of printed document including legal documents, identification cards and papers, labels, packaging, currency, stamps, etc. The value of using non-reproducible encoded images on documents such as drivers' licenses and vehicle titles is readily apparent. They are also highly valuable in their use on packaging as a means of identifying counterfeit goods.
The use of encoded images has greatly enhanced the ability to detect counterfeit documents and documents that have been altered. There are circumstances, however, where the use of an optical decoder to detect encoded images is impractical. There are other circumstances where it may be desirable to use encoded images to protect documents even before they are printed. In both types of circumstances (and others), it may be highly desirable to have a digital or software-based decoder that can be used to decode a digitized encoded image. It may also be desirable to combine the use of encoded images with the use of other protective measures.